Dessus or Dessous?

You’re going to think I’m crazy. How can anyone just up and go on a whim? How could you leave your country, your family, your friends and almost all your belongings behind to go and live in a country you’ve never been to before? How could anyone move to a place without learning to speak the language first?
Okay. I am crazy, or at least I was.
But haven’t you ever dreamt of doing just that? Haven’t we all dreamt of starting over at some point in our lives?
As a little girl I used to love to lounge out on the back seat of the car whenever we went on longer trips. I would watch the clouds above me through the window and pretend I was running away. I would imagine a whole new life for myself, but I usually imagined my destination would be Florida or Maine.
So I guess I fell in love with the idea of starting over years prior to falling in love with the man who would offer me the chance to do just that. When he asked me to move with him to France, I stunned him by saying yes. I didn’t hesitate for a second because in a way, I’d been planning that move my entire life.
It sounds easy doesn’t it? I wish it had been. I wish it was.
If you’ve ever travelled and lived far away from your country for a long period of time, you know that it’s never easy. There are things you miss and days you would do just about anything to go back to where you believe you belong. There are other days when you do go back and sometimes get the feeling that you no longer belong there either. You become this person who just can’t feel completely at home anywhere.
If I remain here, in seven years, I will have lived half my life in each country. I wonder if by then, I’ll finally have managed to pronounce dessus and dessous differently and therefore correctly and without having to resort to theatrics in order to indicate whether I mean above or below. That pretty much is how I feel most days over here—like I’m caught between that above and below, not sure exactly where I’m at but floating somewhere in the middle.